The Small Business Influencer Awards voting went live this afternoon, and our CEO and Co-Founder Jack Holt was one of the many worthy people to be nominated in the Leader category (Go Jack!). As we greatly appreciate the nomination, we also agree that helping to bring attention to small businesses and those that support them is a pretty big deal. So we’re doing our part and helping to spread the word.

There’s some great information about the Small Business Influencer Awards included in the press release below, as well as several reasons why this award stands out from others.

As mentioned so eloquently in the comments of the article, “the SMB community needs this type of (award). It brings us together and gives much-needed recognition to deserving businesses, products & individuals.”

If you would like to show your support for small businesses and those that encourage them, please take a moment to vote! If not for Jack, then for another nominee- they will surely thank you. And so do we!

Mattr

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Jack Holt, CEO of Mattr, Nominated For 2014 Small Business Influencer Awards

Cleveland, OH, August 29, 2014 – Jack Holt, CEO & Co-Founder of Mattr, has been nominated for the 2014 Small Business Influencer Awards in the category of Leaders.

The Small Business Influencer Awards honor those who are influential to small businesses in North America, through the products, services, knowledge, information or support they provide to the small business market.

The Awards are designed to recognize the unsung heroes of small businesses – those who support and encourage entrepreneurs and small business owners, and help them achieve success and stay successful.

Says Anita Campbell, CEO of Small Business Trends and one of the co-founders of the Awards along with Ramon Ray of SmallBizTechnology.com, “Influencers are those who play crucial roles in the small business ecosystem, but who often are in the background. Many of the nominees are themselves small business owners, entrepreneurs or small businesses. The impact of the Awards goes well beyond nominees, however – the awards also encourage and excite the nominees’ employees. The Awards are intended to provide that added little boost in motivation and morale that can make a big difference in results. Being nominated also distinguishes the nominee from competitors, and in that sense can lead to competitive advantage.”

About the Small Business Influencer Awards

The Small Business Influencer Awards, now in their third year, enable the small business community to nominate and show their support for those that influence and support them. The Awards have an open nomination period, with community voting, and then a judging period by a group of industry-knowledgeable judges.

The Small Business Influencer Awards initiative is produced by Small Business Trends, an award-winning online publication, serving over 6,000,000 small business owners, stakeholders and entrepreneurs annually, and SmallBizTechnology.com, a media company that produces online content and live events educating small and mid-sized companies on how to strategically use technology as a tool to grow their businesses. The Awards can be found on the Web at: SMBInfluencers.com.

“Why don’t they just give some money to ALS and skip the stupid Facebook video?”

If you’ve thought something like this, you’re not alone. In fact, millions of people probably share your opinion. And all of these people have some specific values in common. You’re not a bad person; it’s just that the craze around the Ice Bucket Challenge pushed your “scorn button”. Why?

So far, the Ice Bucket Challenge has provided a whopping $41 million in donations.Intellectually, you know this couldn’t have happened without the awareness of the Ice Bucket. Let’s talk about the buttons the creators of the Challenge dialed in and specifically, the emotions elicited by values we all share. Then, how you may be able do the same with your marketing content.

We All Have Them

Without going into deep detail about values in this piece (plug: which we’re adding to our platform in September), research shows that every culture shares the same core values:

Most researchers agree that the Schwartz Circumplex Model of Values is a good adaptation of earlier values research. Importantly, this is a “circumplex”, which infers that there’s a relationship between the values, even if they’re conflicting, and that our values may move along the circumplex throughout our lives.

For example, Self-Enhancement comes at the expense of Self-Transcendence. If you’re very open to change, or a non-conformist like Richard Branson, you’re less likely to be that more deliberate person steeped in tradition.

Now think back to the Ice Bucket Challenge. What value-buttons are they pushing? What value-buttons do you push with your content marketing or branding?

Shame on You!

Universalism (your “Public Self”), among all cultures, is said to be the dominant value. It makes sense; if we want to survive, we need to look out for everyone and the planet – not just our clan or tribe, which would be “benevolence”. In the Walking Dead, Hershel is the Universalist while Rick is the benevolent leader, suspicious of outsiders and fiercely protective of his group (if this changes in the last season, don’t tell me).

Universalists are sincerely sympathetic to the plight of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America or Syrian refugees. They may give money to the homeless and observe water or ozone restrictions. This public self value comes at the expense of both the private self and self-indulgence. It’s “Self-Transcendence” in Schwartz’s circumplex, “Public Self” in the second adaptation.

Most interestingly, the leading emotion evoked by public self values like Universalism and Benevolence? Shame.

How to Spin the Shame Card

Shame alone doesn’t work, at least not as well. Before there was the Ice Bucket Challenge, there was Movember, which donates money for men’s health. The social proof provided by Movember and the Ice Bucket Challenge does a fine job of spreading the shame. Do you share those horribly sad images of starving children? Of course not. Jonah Berger writes about the research conducted about “why we share” in his book, Contagious.

Those sad images just aren’t fun, which is what we’re wanting more and more. Self-Indulgence, or Hedonism, is the second value in the Challenge that makes it, and Movember contagious. If the ALS Association’s entire campaign were posting videos of people with ALS sadly asking for pledges, it would still evoke shame. But the donations only started rolling in when the giving got fun – self indulgent: enjoyable, surprising.

For the topic of an upcoming article, I’ll use some research to show that, as consumers, we’re moving along the circumplex to Self-Indulgence as a buying culture.

Where does that leave you, my scornful friend?

You’re Not a Monster

I’m sure you’re a fine human being if you don’t accept the challenge or think it’s stupid. I thought it was stupid. Take a look at the original Schwartz circumplex again. You need to have dominance in two values, Self-Transcendence and Hedonism/Self-Indulgence.

Opposite Self-Transcendence on the circumplex is Self-Enhancement. If you’re driven by power and ambition, climbing the corporate ladder regardless of who gets in the way, these values must come at the expense of the Self-Transcendence.

But remember, you need both. If you’re not into power and money and more benevolent than Rick, do you scorn selfies? Do you resist upgrading on your flight to LA because you don’t really need the extra legroom? When you go on vacation, are you more likely to have all your reservations lined up ahead of time instead of the “anything goes” approach?

If you’re contemptuous of the Challenge, we can infer that you have dominance in Self-Enhancement and/or you’re put off by Self-Indulgence.

Your Brand Has Values, Too

Stephen Colbert still laughs at the fact that the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people. Whether you agree or disagree, you can look at the values your branding and advertising possess how they align with the people who buy your products or services. If you’re consistently in alignment, you can start to leverage them and push some emotional buttons with data to back you up.

In this short article, I’ve really just hit the high points. If you’d like to know more about values-based marketing, drop me a message or sign up for the Mattr blog.

Chances are, you’ve seen a few of these in the past couple of weeks. With back-to-school campaigns in full swing, your marketing team has already spent lots of time figuring out how to best target your customers with relevant ads, but your efforts shouldn’t stop there.

As campaigns roll out, it’s important to understand how to follow brand conversations, use analytics, and tweak campaigns appropriately to ensure your messaging continues to hit the mark.

The Power of Retargeting

Social Media works best for retargeting. Image courtesy of VerticalResponse.

For most websites, only 2 percent of traffic converts on the first visit. That’s where retargeting comes in. By monitoring your marketing campaign in real time, you can adjust it as necessary for maximum impact and target interested consumers where they’re already engaging.

Social media is the best route to take for retargeting success. Social lets you follow brand conversations in real time, which helps reveal any campaign adjustments you need to make.

For instance, you might change the segment you target (boys instead of girls, teens instead of parents) or which platforms you utilize (Facebook instead of Pinterest) based on insights you pull during the campaign.

Here’s how to use social to be more strategic in your retargeting efforts:

Take advantage of tools. Use the right tools to help you discover your brand’s influencers and fans, track popular content, and segment your audience. Whether you use social conversation tracking tools or choose to monitor it manually, make it a priority to dig deeper into the discovery of your brand influencers. These are the people who have the most influence over what people say and think about your brand. Then, work to foster ongoing relationships with these people.

Meet your audience where they are. Brand conversations can tell you what’s resonating within specific demographics. Are teens latching on to your campaign, or do parents seem more interested? Adjust your campaign to target each group differently. Then, look at their interests (favorite websites, blogs, celebrities, etc.), and find ways to take your campaign there. For example, Teen Vogue recently declared the second Saturday in August as Back-to-School Saturday (#BTSS) to cater to its teen/tween audience. About 50 brands participated in offering promotions and product launches, promoted primarily through social media, a mobile insider app, and a dedicated website. Those brands were smart to latch on to Teen Vogue’s influence with teens, tweens, and 20-somethings.

Stay platform-agile. In the old days, marketers received insights about their audience months after putting in a request (by which time many insights were no longer relevant). Now, you should be taking advantage of the opportunity you have to follow conversations around your brand in real time. Analyze social chatter moment to moment, and switch platforms based on your insights. Keep in mind that enthusiasm for Facebook is declining among teens, but if you’re going after Mom and Dad, it might be the best place to be. Of course, these trends change quickly, so it’s important to stay on top of the latest social crazes.

Be mobile-minded. Mobile has redefined today’s retargeting. Not only does it allow you to reach your target anytime, anywhere, but it also lets you retarget banner, app, and browser ads based on consumers’ past activity. When they search for your products but don’t purchase, you can make sure the product they were considering follows them to future browsing sessions. Twitter is especially hot for retargeting right now because brands can share desktop cookies with Twitter to target users with Promoted Tweets.

Measure, tweak, repeat. If one of your retargeting choices isn’t performing as expected, make a quick change and measure again. For example, if parents aren’t responding to your back-to-school campaign, maybe it’s time to go straight to the source and target teens. If most of your audience is engaging from Pinterest, get aggressive with your pinning.

Aeropostale is trying on something new for this year’s college back-to-school. And according to an internal marketing study we conducted at Mattr, I think they’ll clobber both American Eagle and H&M – two retailers serving different segments of the teen fashion market.

Back-to-school season is here, and brands are pulling out all the stops to attract the attention of college shoppers. Combined spending for the back-to-school and college market is estimated to hit $75 billion in 2014, with more than half of that being spent on clothes, dorm furniture, electronics, and school supplies for college students.

These shoppers aren’t one big homogenous group. To be successful, you need to court and convert your unique audience–and like those college kids, you can do it on a ramen budget.

Here are three approaches brands like Target and Aeropostale use. And since these approaches all leverage social data, you still have time to put some strategies into place for this season’s back-to-school.

1. Identify (and woo) your college student brand persona.

If you’re like many brands, you might only target college shoppers based on age or location. But the college market is unique and varied, and many brands are missing out on catering to their audience’s interests, values, and personality traits.To engage your target customers, you need to segment.

Within the college market, there are people whose personalities and values compel them to click on discounts. But others within the same age range and lifestyle bracket are so repelled by discount messaging that trying it would damage your brand.

Just look at teen fashion retailers Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle. They overwhelmingly fall into the “rugged” and “daring” personas — personalities that love edgy messaging and are turned off by discounted, commoditized goods. Their suggestive, forward advertising appeals to that daring personality and can cause a bit of controversy.

On the other hand, teen fashion discounters or “fast fashion” brands like H&M speak to an entirely different segment of the college market and inspire their customers with different messaging.

2. Target the right influencers for your unique personas.

When you aim blanket messaging at the college market, you have to pay for generic, expensive media influencers. But what if you could make the most of your advertising budget and resonate with your audience at the same time?

You can. By identifying unique, over-indexed influencers and media personalities, you can spend less but reach a higher concentration of your audience. Here’s that ramen budget win.

For teen fashion retailers like Abercrombie & Fitch and American Eagle, the “daring” spenders are all focused on pop culture entertainment interests associated with a younger demographic.

Using research gleaned online or from your data-gathering store location, you can view the overlap between your brand, your customers, and other brands based on interest. You can then identify less popular influencers who are more likely to resonate with your audience.

3. Be ready to shift gears.

Here’s where it gets really interesting. According to our analysis of the people talking on social to brands like Abercrombie and Aeropostale, teens are becoming more price sensitive. So they still respond to edgy advertisements, but are more than willing to pay less than the American Eagle price.

So here’s what Aeropostale has done. Because of the trend to price sensitivity among their teen consumers, they launched an aggressive shift by moving down market. With sub-brands like “Live Love Dream” and prices closer to H&M and Forever21, they’re positioned to capture the American Eagle teen. They know that their target market will click on edgy content, but will also click on the Buy button when they see the H&M – like prices.

The lesson for hungry college market brands? Be willing to shake things up with targeted tactics and promotions that will speak to your specific segment of college students.

Most brands think of the college crowd as a single category, and their back-to-school marketing suffers for it. Gain an edge in the college market without blowing your budget by looking to form deeper, more nuanced connections and inspiring your audience to make purchases that align with their values.